Talk show host Montel Williams ripped Fox counterpart Bill O’Reilly after a disagreement concerning Williams’ scheduled appearance on The O’Reilly Factor prompted O’Reilly to make fun of him on-air.

“You have to take it to another place, O’Reilly, and call me a coward, because I won’t talk to you?” Williams said in a video he posted on Twitter, adding, “The word ‘coward’ is usually used on people who have done most of the things that you’ve done, like embellishing lies about your credentials as a journalist, like the fact that your own daughter in a testimony in a court case — reported in the Washington Post — said that you dragged your ex-wife down a flight of stairs. You wanna talk about coward, homeboy? When you point a finger this way, three are coming back. We know who the coward is.”

Instead, Williams said that show staffers only wanted him to concentrate on the speech. But instead of letting the matter drop, O’Reilly sarcastically said during the show that he left because of “a gay thing,”

“It isn’t his loss, because he’ll never be on this program again,” O’Reilly responded. “He’s not a man of his word, he’s unprofessional. Montel, I’ve known you for a long time, but that is about as low as it gets.”

Mediaite reported that later in the show, O’Reilly brought Williams up again, saying, “We didn’t miss Montel Williams at all. We didn’t miss him. Did anybody miss him? … Hey Montel, you’re not a stand-up guy, I gotta tell you. Walking out at the last minute? Very cowardly.”

About the Author

Arturo R. García is the managing editor at Racialicious.com. He is based in San Diego, California and has written for both print and broadcast media, including contributions to GlobalComment.com, The Root and Comment Is Free. Follow him on Twitter at @ABoyNamedArt